Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 9.djvu/117

 INTRODUCTION TO SOCIOLOGY 103

aid at a certain time in the formation of industrial zones, at least in part different from the zones purely military or political, the contact of which with other zones creates, at once, either new conflicts and barriers, for example the customs, or new com- munities of effort based on the division of social labor.

The dispersion even of minerals, equally necessary, in the different centers, is a favorable factor in social cohesion ; it is opposed to the selfishness and isolation of societies as well as to the exclusive monopoly of one to the detriment of another. In prehistoric times the existence of certain kinds of stone in cer- tain regions, and the manufacture of stone implements and weapons, established relations between groups less favored under this relation and the first industrial centers.

Iron is found in Asia, Mexico, the Argentine Republic, France, and Germany; copper on Lake Superior, in Cornwall, Saxony, Savoy, Piedmont, Sweden and Norway, Hungary, and Russia; silver, in Suabia, Saxony, Bohemia, Norway, Spain, the United States, Peru, Mexico, Chili, and Bolivia. Silver is essen- tially an American product. In 1895 out f 5-3 million kilo- grams of refined silver, America produced 4.4 millions, or 83 per cent, of the total. Australia, which ranks next to America, produced only about 500,000 kilograms.

Concerning the production of gold, M. de Foville, in his work on the " Geographic de Tor," printed in the Annales de Gtographie, May, 1897, classifies the centers of production of gold according to their proportional importance at this time in the following manner, letting one square centimeter represent the value of twenty millions:

sq. cm. IO.O

- 8.0

4.5

- 5-0

3.5

- - 3.0 2-5

2.0 2.O 2.O

sq. cm.

United States of America,

241.5

Canada

Southern Africa

24O.O

Japan and Corea

Australia -

231.0

Venezuela -

Russian empire

156.0

Chili - -

Mexico

30.0

India (Dutch) -

China - - - - -

30.0

Guiana (Dutch)

India (English) -

25.0

Central America

Columbia - - - -

15.0

The Gold Coast

Guiana (British) - - -

12.0

Ethiopia

Guiana (French) -

12.

Madagascar -

Brazil

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